$5 engineering print + $15 window frame = a whole lotta awesome

Hi, my name is Jennifer, and I'm a pinterest addict. I have a crap ton of stuff pinned, and have actually been getting things crossed off my pinterest to do list. Woot!

I know by now you've heard all the cool bloggers raving about how you can get an engineering print at Staples for under $5, right? It only prints in black and white, but I happen to think black and white pictures are classy. You can get up to a 3x4 picture printed, which is awesome, and they'll even trim it for you. 

I saw this picture on pinterest, and fell in love with the idea. I have a favorite wedding photo that I've been wanting to get printed and framed, and this looked like the perfect idea. 

http://pinterest.com/pin/144678206749363135/

So, first thing first, I had to find an antique window frame. Which is harder than you'd think. Ebay was a bust unless I wanted to spend a ton on shipping. The one store around me that had some wanted $40, no thank you. So I enlisted my friends on Facebook. My buddy Julie told me about some she saw on a local FB board, so I joined their group and called dibs on one of the frames. $15 and two days later, I picked one up. I tried to take into account the picture I wanted to use, so I wouldn't have a slat going across our faces. 

Hubby and I went to pick it up (it's 2x3 feet and heavy). There were a few old nails sticking out of it, but thanks to hubby and my dremel, he was able to cut all of those off. 

Then an hour, a razorblade and a spray from the hose later, I had it all cleaned up. Some of the larger chunks of paint came off when I was cleaning it up, so since my wood glue had all but dried up, I just hot glued them back on there. 

Hubby took photos of the next part, but a certain 22 month old figured out how to delete photos off of my iPhone, so we'll use our imagination here. I had the picture printed off, and I added an inch to my window pane measurements. I figure it'd let me move around if need be so the post in the middle wasn't in an important spot. Probably not an option if your photo is an extreme close up/crop, but I had some background to play around with in my photo.

So, I started with one side, lined up my photo, made marks of where to trim on the left, top and bottom side, and trimmed those off. I had to cut about an inch out of the middle of my photo, since it's two pieces of glass and not one, and I wanted my photo to lay flush against both panes of glass. Make sense? Then I just taped them down, and laid some cut out cardboard across the back so my picture would lay flat. And voila!

I chose to attach the picture on the outside of the glass. The inside had the some really cool hinges and hooks that I liked (you can kind of see them at the bottom of the frame under Jake's foot). Then had hubby attach some heavy picture hangers, and attach them to the wall into a stud. It's at the end of the entryway hallway.

Now, I will say that the print isn't 100% perfectly clear, but it's close. Also, there are watermarks on the paper that you can see if you're standing at an angle. However, it was much more noticeable on Jake's black suit than on the gray stone background of the ceremony location. The Staples employee was really cool and printed it for us a few times so we could get the watermark in the least noticeable spot.

For $20 bucks though, I'm super thrilled with how it turned out. 

Partying up in here...